Lucid Motors stock is in the final stages of going public with the luxury electric-vehicle startup poised to become one of the biggest new EV stocks.
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Shareholders voted to approve the merger of blank check company Churchill Capital Corp IV (CCIV) and Lucid Motors (LCID) Friday morning. The vote was delayed from Thursday because not enough shareholders had approved a key proposal.
The problem may have stemmed from the fact that some shareholders were unaware of access codes that were emailed to them and that might have ended up in their spam folders. It’s also possible that the recent influx of retail investors includes folks less experienced with the voting process and failed to vote as a result.
Lucid Motors stock will debut July 26, trading under the symbol LCID on the New York Stock Exchange.
The startup should receive about $4.4 billion in cash from the transaction, after expenses. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has plowed $1 billion into Lucid. When Lucid Motors stock goes public, the fund will likely own about 60% of the company, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The blank-check deal values Lucid at around $24 billion. That would dwarf the market caps other recent EV stocks like Fisker (FSR), Canoo (GOEV) and Arrival (ARVL), which are still developing their vehicles.
Instead, Lucid Motors stock would be more comparable with the market caps of Chinese EV stocks Nio (NIO), Xpeng (XPEV) and Li Auto (LI), which already produce tens of thousands of cars.
However, they all pale in comparison to Tesla (TSLA), which commands a market cap of $631 billion.
Founded in 2007 under the name Atieva, Lucid Motors is a luxury electric-vehicle manufacturing and development company. Peter Rawlinson, Tesla’s former VP of engineering, is Lucid’s CEO.
Newark, Calif.-based Lucid aims to compete directly against Tesla. Rawlinson said in an investor call on July 13 that its luxury sedan Lucid Air is on track for deliveries in 2021. Lucid plans to roll out its Gravity performance luxury SUV in 2023.
The Lucid Air has a price tag of around $70,000 after tax credits, while the Air Dream Edition will cost $162,000. The EV features an autonomous driving system with 32 sensors including long-distance Lidar, which Tesla does not use.
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Lucid Motors Stock Deal To Lift Growth
Shares of Churchill Capital, which will become Lucid Motors stock, rallied 5.9% to 24.25 on the stock market today. According to MarketSmith chart analysis, it hit a high of 64.86 intraday on Feb. 18, shortly before announcing its plans to take Lucid public.
Among other EV stocks, Tesla fell 0.9%. Chinese EV stocks sold off as Beijing widened its crackdown beyond technology companies. Nio stock gave up 4.5%, Li Auto lost 78% and Xpeng shed 5.25%.
Financing from the Churchill Capital merger will be used to support expansion of Lucid’s manufacturing facility in Arizona.
“Scheduled to expand over three phases in the coming years, Lucid’s Arizona facility is designed to be capable of producing approximately 365,000 units per year at scale,” Rawlinson said in a statement.
Rawlinson said Lucid Air reservations have surpassed 10,000, which represents $900 million in anticipated sales. Lucid expects to produce 20,000 unit in 2022, ramping up to more than 250,000 vehicles per year by 2026.
With the recent opening of Lucid Studios in Illinois and New York, Lucid is now up to eight locations across the country. It expects to open more in the coming months in the U.S. and Canada. Rawlinson anticipates more than 20 retail and service locations open by the end of the year.
Follow Adelia Cellini Linecker on Twitter @IBD_Adelia.
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